Greek community expresses sadness

George Anastasakis
, who owns Famous Pizza on P.T. Barnum Square in Bethel, has a house and relatives in Areopolis.

"It's very beautiful," said Anastasakis about the village. Stone houses hundreds of years old sit amid mountains not far from the clear Aegean Sea.

Now Anastasakis, who is 64 and came to this country in 1967, doesn't know if his house and the house of his cousin still exist. He at least knows, however, his cousin is alive, unlike some 63 other people in Greece who died from the fires.

"My heart goes out to them," Anastasakis said.

Besides lives lost, Anastasakis said livelihoods were lost.

"A lot lost their olive trees," said Anastasakis, who lives in Bethel and has owned Famous Pizza since 1982. "And livestock was burned."

Anastasakis was among several people in the Danbury area's Greek community who talked Monday about their sadness and worry over the devastating fires.

The bulk of the fires are in the Peloponnese, where the ancient site of the first Olympic games -- Olympia -- was threatened by the flames. "My people are from the Olympia area," said Karloutsos, who was born in this country. "A lot of the villages there are destroyed."

Karloutsos' immediate family lives in the United States, but he worries about his cousin in a village called Latzoie, about 15 miles from Olympia. "He has olive groves and grape vines and makes wine and olive oil."

Fires are not just confined to the Peloponnese peninsula. They also threatened Athens, which is farther west, and are spreading on the Greek island of Evia, near Athens.

"All of Greece has been affected," said Danbury resident and kindergarten teacher
Maria Kallianiotis
, who returned last week after spending six weeks on Evia with relatives. She said "everyone knows someone" who has suffered from the fires.

Evia, she said, is the second-largest island in Greece. Though the fires hadn't hit the town where she was staying on the island, Kallianiotis felt its effects.

"You could smell the fire and see the ashes in the air," Kallianiotis said.

Maria Bochinis
, who lives in Hopewell Junction, N.Y., and attends the Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in Danbury, had a similar experience. "I was laying on the beach," said Bochinis about a beach 90 minutes from Athens, "and there were ashes on my skin."

Like many Greek-Americans, Kallianiotis and Bochinis visit that country every summer. Fires in the dry, hot Greek summer are common.

But both women said past years' fires are no comparison to this year's.

"There's never been a state of crisis like there is now," Kallianiotis said. The fires are so bad that people "are worried about the oxygen level."

Bochinis, an accountant for a property management company, said the Greek news is dominated by the fires. "All the talk on the TV was about the fires."

According to reports from
the Associated Press
, from Sunday morning to Monday morning, 89 new fires broke out. Several people were arrested on suspicion of arson, although some were accused of starting fires through negligence rather than deliberately.

Because building on forest land is prohibited in Greece, many Greeks blame unscrupulous developers for setting fires to destroy forests in hopes of eventually building on them.

Anastasakis, the Bethel pizza shop owner, believes the great majority of the fires "are set deliberately." Like many other Greeks, he's also angry at the Greek government.

"The (Greek) government doesn't care about people. Every summer there's fires. Where's the protection for the people?"

Anastasakis, and all those interviewed in the Danbury area Greek community, expressed empathy and sadness for the plight of Greek residents.

"I feel terrible about those fires in Greece," Niki Bochinis, the mother of Maria Bochinis, said. "Everybody is concerned about the cause and the results."